Given the political system's tepid response to the unbridled brigandage perpetrated by the financial industries during the previous decades, when it merely bows to the staggering inevitable, the moment is worthy of at least two cheers. Elizabeth Warren knows more about how the banking industry really works than anyone in the Congress at the moment. By this, I mean the way the system really works — how it works to benefit the people at the top of the industry at the expense of the rest of us, how it is designed more to allow people to create new ways to cheat rather than new ways to generate jobs, how it enriches itself while destroying lives in places it doesn't even know exist. Moreover, this is something of an indication that Harry Reid, at least, gets the message that business as usual may be about to change, given the nature of his new majority.

Come the end of January, over by the Senate Banking Committee, they're gonna be able to sell tickets.